Chapter 29

Translator: Willia

As always, Valery opened his eyes at dawn. But he did not feel refreshed.

Part of it was the unfamiliar surroundings, and part of it was that, for the first time in a while, the sounds of people going about their lives outside had kept him from sleeping soundly.

There were people heading out for duty even at night, wives and mothers seeing them off, and others returning from duty and stopping for a drink. It was hardly something he could complain about as mere noise.

The room was dim, so he felt around and lit the lantern. It seemed to have been tidied up well enough, but since he was staying in a house someone else had lived in, traces of another person's life lingered everywhere.

The fatigue of the journey clung heavily to his body, but he was not sleepy either, so he simply got up.

First, he checked that his weapons were where they should be, then drew his sword and examined the blade. After that, he went to the large jar in the corner of the house.

When he lifted the lid, he found it full of water. He ladled some into a basin, crouched down, and managed little more than washing his face. There was no towel, so he roughly wiped his face with his clothes.

Belfort was a fine place in most respects, but it had one weakness: securing drinking water was difficult. There was no well, nor was there a river nearby, so the villagers had to travel some distance to draw water from a spring or stream.

Valery put on his armor and stepped outside. The dark, watery hue of dawn filled the world.

"You're up already?"

Edric asked. He too was armed, though unlike Valery he wore no chainmail, only a thick gambeson and a helmet.

"This is when I usually rise."

"I see. Had you stayed a little longer, my wife would have brought you breakfast."

"I shall have some porridge later."

"Mm, understood. I need to go out on watch."

Valery nodded.

"May fortune be with you."

Edric, the Outpost Commander, took up his spear and shield and descended from the rocky heights. Soldiers carrying bows or spears were already waiting below. The gate opened, and they departed to guard the barley fields.

Valery went down to see Snow. Snow was, naturally, in the stable. There were no other horses besides him, though there were other livestock.

From the look of him, someone had brushed him thoroughly. Valery stroked Snow, then cleaned the mud from his hooves.

He gave him feed, let him drink his fill, and passed the time that way.

People gradually began to wake, and Valery returned to the rocky heights and had a simple breakfast.

It was around the time the sun began to rise. Valery was at the house where he was staying, tending to his equipment, when the man who had guided him the day before suddenly threw open the door and rushed in.

He was Belfort's Deputy Outpost Commander, and urgency was written across his face.

"Marshal. It's them."

Valery immediately sheathed his sword, fastened his belt around his waist, and buckled the sword to it.

"Can you see them from the watchtower?"

"Yes."

Valery climbed the watchtower with the Deputy Outpost Commander.

The sun had only just begun to rise over the distant eastern horizon, and near the northern forest he had seen yesterday, a battle was underway. The figures looked no larger than specks from this distance, so Valery narrowed his eyes and studied them carefully.

The Wildlings had smeared their faces and bodies with white paint, making them surprisingly easy to make out even from afar. They hurled stones, and most of their weapons were clubs. A few carried things resembling crude spears.

The Wildlings had the advantage in numbers. Someone unfamiliar with battle might have thought it a fierce struggle, but that was not how Valery saw it.

Edric's side was better armed and more experienced, and they were fighting well while keeping their distance. They loosed arrows from afar, then met anyone who closed in with spear and sword. It did not look particularly dangerous.

But something about it struck Valery as strange.

"Weren't they coming to steal barley?"

"What? Yes, they were."

"But they're fighting far too openly. Considering when the Outpost Commander left, couldn't the Wildlings have come earlier and made off with the barley?"

"What? Uh...... Maybe they're very angry."

"Are fights like this common?"

"Not particularly, but they seem to have come determined to fight today. There's no time to lose, Marshal."

Despite the Deputy Outpost Commander's urging, Valery ignored him and looked down toward the village.

"How many people remain here? I mean those capable of fighting."

"......I'm not sure. Six or seven, perhaps."

Valery thought something was wrong. If the Wildlings desperately needed barley, then that was what they should have been after, yet it did not seem that way.

He quickly looked south. The forest there was not as vast as the northern one, but it was still fairly large and dense.

"Close the western gate. No one remaining here is to go reinforce them. Defend this place. There may be an ambush. The Outpost Commander is in less danger than you think."

"......What?"

To the Deputy Outpost Commander, this was absurd. How much could this boy possibly know after only one day here? Frankly, he thought Valery was only saying this because he did not want to go fight.

Whatever he thought, Valery hurried down from the watchtower and gathered the able-bodied men. There were boys around thirteen to fifteen years old among them, but he did not call those children over as well.

"Close the western gate! Send the women and children up, and the rest of you block the approach!"

Valery barked the orders. The armed young men had been preparing to go reinforce the fighting, but though bewildered, they obeyed Valery's commands.

To the Deputy Outpost Commander, Valery was becoming more outrageous by the moment. He had not expected much from him to begin with, but now he was even stopping them from sending reinforcements. It was ridiculous. 'What did some brat know? What if something happened to the Outpost Commander because of this?'

But before long, to their astonishment, Wildlings truly came pouring out of the southern forest.

They looked like a swarm of termites. There were far more of them here than at the place where the Outpost Commander was fighting.

The Deputy Outpost Commander's eyes widened. What in the world was happening? Nothing like this had ever happened before.

The Wildlings either wore animal hides that had barely been tanned or were nearly naked.

They came through the eastern gate, which had deliberately been left open, carrying clubs. Some of the clubs had animal teeth embedded in them, while some of the Wildlings were completely barehanded.

Shrieking wildly, they stormed into the outpost village. Their teeth truly were black. Not only their teeth, but their tongues as well.

"Kyaaaaaaaah!"

There was only one person standing in their way. Valery. Even faced with such numbers, Valery showed no sign of tension as he drew his sword.

"Marshal!"

One of the able-bodied men guarding the uphill path shouted when he saw Valery in danger. He looked as though he would be fortunate to kill even one with his sword before being swept down like a man caught in a wave and trampled underfoot.

The Wildlings showed no fear of death and simply surged forward with crazed ferocity.

But just before they collided, Valery slipped sideways and swung his sword. The Wildling at the very front sprayed red blood from his neck and pitched forward with all the momentum of his charge.

Valery then stepped backward while swinging his sword, and another Wildling fell spraying blood. Next, he slipped past an enemy as though merely brushing by him and sliced through his waist.

Hot entrails spilled out in a rush, steam curling from them.

Then the next, and the next. With movements as smooth as flowing water, Valery killed one man with each stroke.

In an instant, five or six corpses lay sprawled across the ground, and the Wildlings coming from behind tripped over them and fell.

Valery kicked the fallen men hard in the head or drove his sword into their throats. By then, their frenzied momentum died as abruptly as though cold water had been thrown over them.

The grotesque, terrifying Wildlings faltered and slowly backed away after coming face to face with true terror.

Valery spoke to them.

"What made you cease to be human? Can you still speak the tongue of men?"

He sounded like some king or prince. But the words were sincere. He found them repulsive, yet pitiful as well, because he felt both the kinship of being human and the alienness of something no longer human at the same time.

Not only the Wildlings, but his own side stared wide-eyed in shock, and the Deputy Outpost Commander's mind went blank.

In truth, a knight could handle dozens of Wildlings. Yet there was a different sort of chill to Valery.

Ordinarily, knights overwhelmed their enemies with brute violence. Valery, however, looked as though he were precisely filleting a fish or butchering an animal.

His sword flickered too quickly for the eye to follow, and people simply dropped one after another. It gave the unsettling impression that this should not be possible, that no one should be able to kill people so easily.

"Wait, what was the Salt Prince's name again?"

The Deputy Outpost Commander muttered almost to himself. One of the village men, apparently having heard him, answered.

"I heard it was Wid. Wid, the bastard of Winsloe."

At that, it felt as though lightning struck inside the Deputy Outpost Commander's mind. Suddenly, every piece of the puzzle seemed to fall into place. The unaristocratic name, the young age, the uncanny swordsmanship. Whether from elation or fear, his jaw began to tremble.

Ignoring him, Valery took advantage of the Wildlings' hesitation and brought Snow out of the stable. He saddled him, mounted, and shouted toward the men.

"Spears! Bring me two spears!"

Startled by his ringing shout, the men rushed over almost without realizing it. Valery radiated authority.

Valery gave his sword a sharp flick through the air to shake off most of the blood. Droplets spattered across the wall of a nearby house.

Then he sheathed it and took the two spears almost as though snatching them from the men's hands. He hooked one to the saddle and held the other in his hand.

The Wildlings who had poured into Belfort had been unable to flee, yet had not dared attack either. But the moment Valery mounted his horse, they turned and fled in a mass without even looking back. They had never expected a knight to be here.

Valery spurred his horse onward. Snow's hooves struck the paved highroad with a hard clatter.

Valery shot through the eastern gate like a bolt of lightning and headed straight for where the Outpost Commander was fighting. He could see Wildlings scattering and fleeing in every direction.

The boundaries of the barley fields were not clearly defined. Some patches grew thick, while others were sparse. Valery charged through a section where the barley grew thinly.

The whispering rustle of barley brushing past him and the pounding of hooves striking the earth filled his ears.

Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!

To the people of the outpost watching from afar, the black horse racing at full speed beneath the dawn light, red as sunset, looked like a stroke of ink sweeping across the barley field.

The fleeing Wildlings kept glancing back. Every time they turned their heads, Valery was suddenly much closer.

"Aaaaaaaaah!"

One of them screamed, driven mad by fear. But the merciless spear pierced straight through him, and Valery continued racing without slowing in the slightest. Along the way, he ran down several Wildlings and trampled them, leaving their bodies mangled.

Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!

Meanwhile, Edric, the Outpost Commander fighting to defend the barley fields, had begun to sense that something was strange.

Unlike usual, the Wildlings were working themselves into a frenzy and acting as though they meant to fight, yet at the same time they were not charging in recklessly.

At first, he had fought with every nerve drawn taut, but the longer the battle continued, the stranger it felt.

Then the sound of hoofbeats reached his ears as well.

Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!

When he turned his head, Valery was galloping toward them on horseback, brushing through the barley as he charged.

"It's the Marshal!"

One of the soldiers fighting beside him shouted.

Everyone brightened at once, while the Wildlings facing them recoiled in alarm and fled toward the forest.

Valery swept past the place where Edric and his soldiers stood without slowing and continued his charge.

With the massive warhorse thundering past so close, Edric and the soldiers could feel its tremendous weight and speed in their bones, sending a chill through them. Yet that overwhelming power also gave them courage. It was on their side, not the enemy's.

Valery wheeled around, pulled the spear from where it hung at the saddle, and hurled it. The spear flew with tremendous force and struck squarely through the back of a fleeing Wildling.

Thud!

Then he immediately drew his sword and kept riding, cutting through one more man's neck and simply running down and trampling another two. Counting those he had killed in Belfort, he had slain nearly a dozen and a half by himself.

Valery did not pursue them into the forest. At last, he brought his horse to a halt and returned to where Edric stood. Snow breathed hard, huff! huff! He did not snort.

"Belfort was attacked, Outpost Commander. That is why the reinforcements were delayed."

"What!?"

"I evacuated the women and children and drove them all off myself, so you may rest easy. More importantly, should we not counterattack now?"

"......What?"

Edric could hardly think straight. This was the first time the Wildlings had ever launched an attack on such a scale. And they had even employed a Feint Strategy.

"From what I saw, they are short on women and children. They were never after the barley to begin with. In any case, we have successfully repelled their attack, so if we still have strength to spare, we should counterattack immediately. You there. How many more arrows can you loose?"

From atop his horse, Valery pointed to one of the archers as he asked.

"What? Me?"

"How many arrows did you loose during the fight?"

"......I think around ten. I'm running low on arrows, and my arm's numb, so I don't think I can shoot anymore."

"You can still loose around forty more. Send someone to replenish our arrows and weapons, and let us counterattack at once, Outpost Commander."

"......"

An Archer could normally loose around ten arrows in a day. Beyond that, his arm would go numb and he would be unable to continue, though in a desperate battle with his life at stake, he could loose fifty or even sixty arrows in a single day.

But that was the level of the Archers who had served in Valery's unit before regression, not the level of the men here.

Even so, Valery judged that while they might not manage fifty or sixty shots, they could still shoot far more than they already had.

"......"

In any case, Edric was so overwhelmed that he remained bewildered even as his heart pounded furiously. It felt as though he were receiving orders from a true battlefield commander.

And somewhere deep within him, his instincts were already affirming that Valery's judgment was correct.

He had immediately seen through the enemy's true objective, chosen the exact moment to shift from defense to offense, and accurately assessed the strength of both friend and foe to lead them toward victory.

When it came to abilities like these, there was no one in the world who could rival Valery.

The sun had risen only a short while ago. Bright blue paint was spreading across the sky, replacing the black.